Through His Eyes
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: I used to thank you often, wherever you are. Now I thank him, wherever he is, for filling my hollow heart fit to bursting. /Remus follows those grey eyes, no matter who they are attached to. Soulmate!AU. Remus/Sirius, Remus/Regulus.


**"Perhaps our fatal flaw is that we attempt to make forever  
out of people who are meant to be temporary."**

 _Rudy Francisco_

* * *

Sometimes, this body feels old. Aged. Ageing. This body feels lived in. There are lines where once there was just youth. Worry lines from all the time I've spent stressed, or frowning. Laughter lines from all of the smiles I've worn, however briefly. Deep crow's feet, skin looser and not as taut and smooth as it once was.

I wonder which lines you helped make. It is, I think, all I have left of you.

* * *

We were sixteenish. You were a spoilt brat; mummy's favourite, daddy's heir. I wasn't fond of you at first. You were haughty. Self-important. But you had those bright eyes. I've spent my life following those bright eyes. Yours. Sirius'. Nymphadora's.

We were Prefects. That's when I learnt to love your sly smile. I don't remember the details – so long ago, another lifetime – but we patrolled most nights and always ended up in the same corridors. You watched me, _those eyes¸_ and eventually those eyes were an eyelash length away from mine. Somehow, you were so close, and it was strange and unsettling and unexpected – but I _liked_ it.

* * *

I remember once, when I was very young, waking from a strange dream. Not a nightmare, not exactly, but a dream that made me scream for my mother nonetheless. A pair of eyes, I told her. Just a pair of eyes but with them so much pain, so much fear. An unattached pain, an unknown fear.

"You'll find them someday," my mother told me, "and they'll be looking right at you and all lit up and you'll know."

"Is that how you found Dad?" I asked, cuddling closer to her.

She smiled. "If anything, he found me."

I yawned, head heavy. She stayed, arms around me, until I was dreaming once more. And again, a pair of silvery grey eyes, staring into my soul. But this time there was no fear, no pain, only… Curiosity. A sense of wonder.

His, not mine. But I didn't know that yet.

* * *

Sirius and I were only eleven when we met but by then I'd have recognised those eyes anywhere. I didn't tell him, not for a long time. Not until after you. But I didn't have to. He knew. Of course he knew, but he must've felt my apprehension. My concern. I know I felt his echoing back. I can't explain it, how I could separate the two into _mine_ and _his._ It was like a wordless conversation, a call and response our hearts did without permission.

I wondered what his dreams looked like. My eyes, plucked from my face. Formless things. Just colour, just a warm amber, and the anxiety and fear and stress and –

He told me once that half the reason he'd become an animagus was because he couldn't take the nightmares the full moon brought him.

"Do you know what it's like," he'd asked quietly, "to look into a hungry wolf's soul?"

But you were different. You were the eyes without feeling. A reprieve of sorts. Bright and beautiful but blissfully empty. I could stare into your eyes for hours on end and not feel a single thing I wasn't supposed to, not feel a single thing that wasn't mine. I loved that. The easiness of it.

I think you knew that too.

* * *

The Forbidden Forest was teeming with life if you knew where to look. If you looked on, say, a full moon. If you followed the sounds of wild trampling hooves, or howling. I rarely stepped foot in there as me, as a human. It was far too quiet. The whole place was tinged with the wolf's gaze. I couldn't look at a clearing and not see, too, the moon beaming down. Its phantom silvery glow.

You brought me there once. I remember. You said, "We can be together here and no one will know."

You said, "We won't have to hide," but we were hiding, Regulus. We were making ourselves scarce under a canopy of trees, under the endless night. There were no stars. Just dark and heavy clouds, the threat of a storm.

You said, "I know it's not my eyes you see. I don't see yours either," and kissed me hard, kissed me roughly, as if it were my fault.

"Whose do you see?" I asked.

"No one's," you'd said. "Nothing. Just the dark."

Afterwards, we lay still. Hands entwined, staring up at the clouds as they consumed the sky. We lay there until they broke, until the rain began to fall in hard, fat drops.

I never knew whether or not you were lying, but I hope you were.

* * *

I didn't tell him when I saw the Mark on your arm. I regret that he found out through whispers, through rumours.

"One of us has to bring honour to the Black name," you said haughtily, your head held high. You'd never looked less like him.

"He wants people _dead_ , Regulus. He wants to slaughter innocent – "

"He wants to restore the natural balance of things," you said. "We have power, Remus, but we're hiding in the shadows like animals. How is that fair?"

There was a glint of madness in your eyes that made me sick to my stomach. It was wrong. The emptiness in you I'd found so comforting, so freeing, suddenly seemed not like an empty well but a wall. I thought I had peered into you in some way, but instead I had been sitting blankly at your edge not knowing the turmoil behind, not knowing what lay beyond the stone.

"I thought you were better than all of this."

You regarded me as if I were a stranger. The space between us was only mere feet, but felt like miles in that moment.

"Funny," you replied. "I thought the same of you."

* * *

When Sirius first found out about us I thought he'd kill me. Or you. Or both.

I'd never seen him so overcome with rage. Even after, in all our years together and apart, I don't think he'd ever quite reached the fever pitch of that night. He seethed quietly at first, placed all the blame at your feet.

"I'll kill him." He made a mantra of it. Over and over and over, a sick prayer.

"Sirius," I said, "It's not his fault. We were just – I was -"

He turned to me then, our eyes locking. Those bright eyes were red rimmed and wet. I'd never felt so ashamed. Couldn't believe the echoes of grief I felt coming from him in waves.

"I'm sorry," I croaked. Not knowing it was the first of a million useless apologies we would offer each other over the course of our lives. Not knowing it would fix nothing.

He crossed the room in a single stride and kissed me, hard and angry and unforgiving. When he pulled back, I still saw only anger in his face. But I felt it, trickling quietly into my chest; he loved me.

"I'm sorry," I said again, holding his face in my hands. "Sirius, I was – I didn't think you wanted this."

"Of course I bloody wanted this," he all but growled. "But I knew you were scared. Didn't think you would ever risk it."

I smiled, though it was strained. "We can't – you know I'm not – the wolf is – "

I didn't have the words to tell him how afraid I was that he would see me, all of me, and decide I was too much.

"Moony. Shut up."

And he kissed me again.

* * *

They say that everybody gets one great love. The soulmate. The heart that eclipses all others, leaves past loves as pale as ghosts in the mind, takes all the colour from broken hearts and paints itself perfect.

When what we had came to an end, my heart was not broken. It felt hollow. As if you had once lived here, in this body with me. Curled in my chest where I could keep you safe. But we both know that no one is safe these days, and keeping you in the changing heart of a monster was never going to help. Keeping you with me was never going to help.

When you were gone, my hollow heart thrummed and keened for a new warmth to take your place. _Sirius_. Sirius was my one. But if you had not left me so empty, so scared, I would never had needed him in the first place. I used to thank you often, wherever you are. Now I thank him, wherever he is, for filling my hollow heart fit to bursting.

Most of the time, I do not think of you at all.

* * *

 _Written for HPHG using prompts: unexpected, hurt/comfort,_ wc _: 1450, soulmate au, and jealousy. Also for Hogwarts: Sophie's Shelf 37. Remus/Regulus, Amber's Attic, Styles 3. Blackwork - write about a member of the Black family, Em's Emporium - 3. Write a Marauder era fic, Film Festival 54. Hiding, Showtime 10. Lying._


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